Governor Fayemi of Ekiti State has said the testing capacity for coronavirus in the State is zero.
The governor disclosed this on Tuesday on a Channels Television programme, while speaking on COVID-19 and the state’s containment measures amidst the rapid spread of the virus.
The governor, who expressed worry over the current pace of testing for the virus in the state, said “the testing capacity in Ekiti State is zero”.
He said the state is currently liaising with the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) and other private partners to convert genexpert machines meant for testing tuberculosis to COVID-19 testing machines.
“One of the things we’re doing at the level of the governors’ forum is working with NCDC, as well as private sector supporters. We want to convert the genexpert machines, that are already in use to test for tuberculosis to COVID-19 testing machines and that’s on course, because virtually every state has a TB genexpert machine,” the forum’s governor said.
Mr Fayemi said one of the core priorities of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum “is to ensure that all states have ultimately testing capacity.”
“For now, it is true that we’re not testing enough. I think we only have about 8000 tests from the record of NCDC and if we have only 8000 tests, and we already have over 700 confirmed cases, if you extrapolate from that, a worrisome number is what you will deduce from what is going to happen with a country of about 200 million population,” he said.
Speaking about reviewing the lockdown order in the state, Mr Fayemi said “we haven’t reviewed our lockdown order, we have another week to go on our lockdown order. We’re actually tightening our border control, which is what was responsible for the entry of the person who tested positive recently in Ekiti State.”
The governor urged Nigerians to adhere strictly to the stay at home rule of the NCDC.
He said Nigerians can live anywhere they’re currently resident, as there is no need trying to return to their respective states, in order guarantee careful and successful tracking of infected persons.
The NCDC said as of 11:25 p.m. on April 21, there were 782 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in Nigeria.
Of these, 197 infected people have recovered and had been discharged. The death toll rose to 25 from 22 reported on Monday.